The Problem with Protecting the "Sacred"

Thread hop, but yes, I agree that anti-blasphemy laws are bad. As are the vast majority of laws limiting free speech. I don't really even see how this is a religious vs irreligious issue. It's a totalitarianism vs freedom issue. If somebody blasphemed my God to my face, I'd be annoyed with them. If they did so while on my property, I'd feel like throwing them out on their ear, though I hope I'd restrain myself. But I don't believe in trying to control people's thoughts or words by force in pretty much any context, except where they have already promised not to say something in that specific situation.

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Also thread hopping, but has anyone mentioned how blasphemy can be used as a weapon against holders of a faith? For example, making a group turn aggressive so that they can be put into a negative light and face crackdowns by the state.

When you reach a certain level of Fanatic, the trouble isn't just baiting them to attack.

Its that they WILL attack a percieved slight.

By that point its quickly turns into a matter of Force. Who has more power to Force the Fanatic into either sucking it up or having the Fanatic pound the Sacred Belief into an Unbeliever's hide.

But then the baiting can also prove the fanatics are right. Getting more people into its side.

If a chicken crosses the road and nobody else is around to see it, does the road move beneath the chicken instead?

Baiting or not, the issue is that their Passion/Belief is so high it makes baiting a valid tactic.

Ever try to bait someone over something he/she doesn't care about?

(Personal) Example: "You eat soy dogs with lemon-garlic sauce?!! Oh the horror!!! The HORROR!!!"

VS

Having a bacon and egg sandwhich with a cold beer and watching babes in bikinis walk by in a public beach.

Conservative Muslims/Amish/The Pope/Femenists/Moral Guardians/(Insert Uptight Group Here)/ would be baying for blood.

edited 15th Jun '12 12:46:39 AM by Natasel

I'm trying to say baiting can increase the number of fanatics, which is bad for everyone. Also, an atheist who deface religious symbol just to give a finger to the the religious is equal in dickishness with a religious fundie defacing the religious symbol of another religion just to give a finger to the member of the religion.

If a chicken crosses the road and nobody else is around to see it, does the road move beneath the chicken instead?

There have been plenty of occasions when social forces have caused religious vs. Nonreligious groups butted heads and the government has had to step on toes to break it up, making the matters worse sometimes when they are just doing their constitutional duty.

The first example that comes to mind is the secular vs. Religious displays during holiday.

When an atheist group secured first dibs to have their display on the White House lawn, they did it through all the legal channels and it was fair. But certain Christian groups flipped shit. Just like how people flipped out over Obama calling it a Holiday tree or Tebow saying Happy Holidays instead of Christmas.

Now when the government (President, judge, etc.) backs the atheists, because they have freedom of speech, they are accused of being anti-Christian, encouraging blasphemy and other anti-Christian actions, and being against freedom of religion.

I'm not trying to pick on Christianity, but being in America, that's the majority around me in both direct and indirect experience.

In the town I graduated high school from, there was a local pagen group that legally bought a bill board for both Easter and Halloween. All their sign did was give a brief history of the holiday and some international equalivants, and then a wish for a happy holiday. Needless to say when the manager refused to take it down because they paid, and the cops refused to do anything because it was legal, the bill board was vandalized. The money was given back and it was never spoke of again.

Now had a pagen group gone against a Christian display, specifically in my community, I know there would be death threats because they would see it as a direct attack on god. This is rather scary.

You can't force people to choose between freedom of speech and freedom of religion. It's the same damned ammendment!

"Psssh. Even if you could catch a miracle on a picture any person would probably delete it to make space for more porn." - Aszur

Loons breed more loons, whatever their religious inclination.

If a chicken crosses the road and nobody else is around to see it, does the road move beneath the chicken instead?

Will read and comment later; but one thing that I wanted to add is that after thinking about it, I changed idea on a point — since the student apologized and returned the Host, there is no point in lobbying for him to be removed from the university. What he did is reprehensible; but I don't believe in punishment for punishment's sake, and I don't plan to start.

And of course, I do apologize for the fact that people of my religion apparently saw fit to send death threats: that was definitely out of line, obviously. I will not, however, apologize for people protesting against his actions and even asking for his dismissal from the college.

edited 15th Jun '12 1:59:03 AM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

When the people who consider some object or ritual holy organize for the goal of hurting people who don't have the proper respect and reverence for said object or ritual, we're no longer operating on the axis of rude or polite.

I don't mean to equivocate various forms of religious discrimination with discrimination against homosexuals, but the reasoning is the same as a gay pride parade, I think. When someone starts actively trying to hurt people for the crime of disagreeing with them or being different than they think you should be or whatever, your best method of retaliation is to stand up, throw the fact there are in fact people who disagree and people who are different at them, and face them down.

Challenging intolerance is rude, yes.

Because they already did and you want to undermine their ability to do it again.

It's not "I hate your guts." It's "Remember: your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins."

Try to keep this in perspective here: I'm not advocating violence. I'm not advocating hurting anyone or trying to take away their rights. I'm advocating showing contempt for the justifications used by people who are.

It does if it means standing on the sidelines and ignoring destructive behavior.

edited 15th Jun '12 7:32:37 AM by Paul3

I just wanted to point something out, there are certain religious among us actually want our ideas and beliefs challenged. No really.

First of all, many of us has witnessed firsthand the hypocrisy and outright rabid violence that some alleged followers, particularly those of Christianity, have displayed. Because they are as much an enemy to us as they are to the non-religious, actually moreso, we need to be aware of the damage they're doing to the public at large.

More than that, everything simply works better when we're not engaged in a pointless war of extermination with people and instead we're working together.

This would've been correct if not for a few flaws:

1) Not every Christian, indeed not every religious person, is like that.

2) This bitterness against Christianity doesn't take into account that I can run off a list of all the ills perpetrated by communists, gays, the scientific community, Americans, the Amish, the Furry Fandom, and basically all of humanity. We can't get on a soapbox and condemn entire swaths of people for the actions of some or a few.

3) Most important, challenging intolerance is good. It must be done if we are to have a functional society. Challenging intolerance by being even more intolerant; nothing more than pettiness and hypocrisy trying to pass itself as enlightenment. And it fools nobody.

edited 15th Jun '12 7:39:54 AM by TheStarshipMaxima

It was an honor

@ Starship: No one is saying all Christians are like that. And no one is saying that Christians aren't the only one this issue applies to. But most of the participants in this thread are in communities that as a majority identify themselves as Christian.

In American news, it is mainly Christian groups that are calling blasphemy in the legal channels, so most real world examples we can identify with first hand are going to be Christian.

You can argue if they are "good" Christians or not. But as long as they identify themselves as such and swear blasphemy according to their interpretation, it's fair game.

"Psssh. Even if you could catch a miracle on a picture any person would probably delete it to make space for more porn." - Aszur

But, using symbols that also are important to a large segment of the population you are not aiming the torpedoes at... still hits them, unless you very carefully make your point about which brand of a religion/ faith/ sect whatever you are aiming at.

Too often, the swipe is "you are silly people for believing it, you uncultured louts". Whammo: paint every Christian as the ones you really want to shake up, why don't you? It's just not that helpful, as doing so will actually turn some of those on the fence, who were willing to give at least half an ear, right off.

Finesse: not usually a part of iconoclasm.

I'm not missing any pieces, here. If a large group of communists organized for the purpose of persecuting everyone who didn't show proper respect to a crossed hammer-and-sickle, or something, it would make me want to publicly destroy and or desecrate that symbol. It's just that no such organization exists.

OK, let me try to make a post — I'm a bit in a hurry, so apologies if I am missing something important:

That's not how pluralism works. I understand that from your point of view, Catholicism is a (bafflingly popular) fandom that, among other things, gets unreasonably angry when some crackers are destroyed; but from my point of view, atheism is a bafflingly popular fandom that, among other things, is unreasonably unfazed by the desecration of the Body of Our Lord and Saviour. And I resent the idea that society should be implicitly atheistic and, at most, tolerate my beliefs as long as I do not cause annoyance as much as you would resent the opposite.

Our value systems are not reconciliable: there simply is no way to make a society with which both of us would be perfectly happy. The recognition of this fact was the cause of the establishment of the old principle of cuius regio eius religio (to every realm, its religion): a state cannot make Catholics and Protestants equally happy, and hitting each other with hammers gets old eventually, so we should have Catholic confessional states and Protestant confessional states. If somebody is unhappy, they can move; and if no one of the possibilities meets their tastes, too bad for them.

Now, the modern opinion is that that is an awful solution, and I agree. So we went for a slightly less awful solution: a pluralistic state, in which Protestants and Catholics and Muslims and, yes, atheists can live together. It is not a perfect solution: the perfect solution, of course, would be everybody spontaneously converting to the Holy Roman Catholic Church. But it seems to work better than all viable alternatives.

But the thing to remember is that this is not an alliance, and strictly speaking it is not even a truce: no truce is possible, even in principle. Rather, it is sort of a war convention: our battles are supposed to be fought with words, and nothing more. And the state — since it is a state to which all of us need to be able to have allegiance towards — should simply refuse to take any position with respect to matters of religion: it does not advocate the Catholic position, nor the Protestant position, not the atheistic position, and not even the agnostic position. It refuses to address the issue at all, because that's the only thing it can do.

As I said, it's not a perfect solution. But it beats slaughter or totalitarianism.

Now, what the student and Myers did was precisely breaking this agreement. I will freely admit that there are Christians who have done the same, and I will not blame atheists for protesting angrily about that — heck, I do join them when I can. But similarly, you cannot blame me and Catholics for protesting angrily at Myers' desecration of the holiest Object of our religion. I would have been far less offended if Myers had spray-painted slurs on the inside of a Church; and of course, I need scarcely say that if somebody spray-painted slurs inside an atheist conventions, atheists would protest very angrily. Perhaps some of the... let's go with "less sophisticated"... members of the atheist community would even write death threats to to culprit, much to the frustration of the others, who would then have to apologize — on the behalf of their community — to the very people who set to insult them and what they stand for.

You don't get to tell me how I should react when something bad happens to an item I hold sacred. Would you tell the Jews that they should stop whining and build a new Ark of the Covenant to replace the lost one?

You can certainly say that "problems happen" because of our unreasonable devotion to the Hosts, if you will; but you*

will still kindly keep your hands off them, if you please.

I don't know; but that's not the point. If you invite me in your home, and I start stealing your stuff in front of you, and you tell me angrily to cut it out, that is not a cue for me to claim that since you were rude, I get to take away what I want.

I could argue that this too is irrelevant. Even if you hold that our devotion to the Hosts is unreasonable and impious — that's what the Protestants generally believe, I suppose — you still don't get to mess with our stuff.

But anyway... the thing here is that you are misunderstanding the meaning of Jesus' sacrifice. He did not die to save my biological life as it is now, or the biological life of humankind: humans were not precisely in danger of extinction then, and they are not in danger of extinction now. Rather — and I am simplifying horribly here, but that does not matter that much for the purposes of this thread — Jesus' sacrifice was one of the necessary steps for the coming of the Kingdom of God, for the raising of the fallen world towards perfection. If the testimony of me dying for a Host can be of any help in that, that would not be a waste of a life: at least not in any sense other than that of the passage that says that who will throw away his life will find it, and who will keep it will lose it.

Again, I don't expect everybody to agree with me here. I am not asking for agreement, and I am not asking for reverence. What I am demanding is that if you*

have to quarrel with me and mine, you do so with words and nothing more. In exchange, I will do the same.

It varies. Transubstantiation is only accepted by Catholics and some splinter groups. The Orthodox Church does not accept Transubstantiation, in the sense that it does not accept the philosophical explanation of it in terms of Substance and Accident; but it holds that the consecrated Hosts is the Body of Christ, and they will get as pissed off as Catholics do if you mess with their Hosts (by the way, if you do that, Catholics will also get pissed off: since the Orthodox Church has valid Apostolic Succession, their Sacraments are valid). If I am not mistaken, Anglicans also accept the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, but they refuse the Transubstantiation. Whether the Anglicans have rightful Apostolic Succession is a matter of debate — the official position says that they don't, but even within the Catholic Church there are theologians who say that this is nonsense and they do. In any case, don't mess with them, they are nice people.

Most (but not all) Protestants hold that it is only symbolic. In their case, I agree that they are correct: no offense is meant, of course, but they lack rightful Apostolic Succession, so their Eucharist is precisely what they say it is — a rite performed to remember Christ's Sacrifice, but nothing more than that.

This is probably not the right place to debate on whether Christ is truly present in the Eucharist — among other things, as I said, I don't feel that I have the theological training to do that in a passable way — but one thing that should be evident is that it is a very ancient doctrine, held by the most ancient Churches and rejected by some of the more modern ones (plus the Anglicans, who as usual cannot decide if they want to be Catholic or Protestant )

EDIT: Corrected a mistake — the Old Catholics do not subscribe to the Transubstantiation, although they do subscribe to Real Presence and have valid sacraments (since they have valid Apostolic Succession). My apologies.

edited 15th Jun '12 10:26:08 AM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

So: all belief = bad. All symbols = bad?

Heaven help any poor girl who starts imagining her Hello Kitty walks and talks when she's playing with it anywhere near you, then.

I KNEW THE MONKS WHO FORBADE MAKING OF BUDDHA IMAGES WERE RIGHT. IT MAKES US IMPENETRABLE TO SYMBOL AND IDOL DESTRUCTION.

So I must break all Buddha images and then set myself on fire and meditate on the burning.

I will gain so many Buddha points.

If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah

That's not how pluralism works.

No, that's exactly how pluralism works. You're arguing against freedom of religion.

edited 15th Jun '12 9:57:45 AM by Paul3

Read again. Better, this time. "Freedom of religion" does not mean "everybody must be atheist, but some atheists can go to Mass if they really want to", just as it does not mean "everybody must be Catholic, but some Catholics can avoid going to Mass if they really want to."

edited 15th Jun '12 10:02:31 AM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

Unsporting. That poor strawman has no means to defend himself.

edited 15th Jun '12 10:01:21 AM by Paul3

Carciofus, you're arguing this poor kid ought to be punished for either failing to understand or disagreeing with (it's not clear which) a point of your doctrine. No matter how holy that ritual he failed to perform correctly is, no matter how offended you are, it doesn't change that.

But that's a bit of a dodge, anyway. Your doctrine doesn't indicate that everyone from his congregation is going to Hell now, or that the mountains will crumble and the seas will boil for his crime, or anything dire like that. It doesn't indicate an injury to your god. I think it probably does indicate some kind of spiritual danger for the perpetrator, but that hardly justifies attacking him.

Even within the context of your own faith the only justification you can offer is you're mad he dared to defy your self-appointed authority. If that's so hurtful you think it warrants material retaliation, you need some more experience in your authority being defied.

Freedom of religion does mean if a Catholic doesn't agree with doctrines advocated by his fellows they're just going to have to stiffen that lip and deal with it.

edited 15th Jun '12 10:10:29 AM by Paul3

I am arguing neither, actually. I don't care about him failing to understand or disagreeing with a point of my doctrine; I care about him desecrating a holy item of my religion — the holiest, as a matter of fact. And he cannot claim good faith: he faked eating it, and he was told to return it or eat it, and then he stole it.

One thing, though, about which I changed idea (I wrote that in my previous post): since he returned the Host and apologized, I would not lobby for him to be punished. What he did is still a major asshole move; but I don't care much for punishment for the sake of punishment.

What it indicates is that the Body of Christ has been kept as a freaking souvenir by some idiotic kid who really should have known better; and that because people got angry about that, somebody else took it upon himself to take the Body of Christ and piercing it with a rusty nail, together with a few pages of the God Delusion (in order to show that he is enlightened and does not worry about desecrating "symbols" of atheism, see.)

It is not a matter of agreement, it is a matter of action. Advocate whatever you want about the Eucharist; just don't go and steal it from Catholic churches.

Really, is this so difficult a concept?

edited 15th Jun '12 10:20:27 AM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

Bingo.

PS: Paul... I wasn't actually raising that hypothetical lass as a strawgirl: I was actually asking. But, never mind. (I need an emote between humour, tongue-in-cheek and a question... badly. I seem to need it a lot.)

edited 15th Jun '12 10:48:57 AM by Euodiachloris

Yeah, the ritual he didn't observe correctly is really, really important. You're really, really mad he doesn't agree with your interpretation of it.

Obviously if you're setting out to hurt people you're pretty angry, so you can stop explaining that you are. Fact of the matter is he does disagree, and you seem think that since he does it's okay to seek retaliation against him. You think he's desecrating the holiest thing in your religion. He obviously disagrees. Your understanding is right, his is wrong, and that means you get to punish him.

That's what religious intolerance is.

edited 15th Jun '12 10:50:31 AM by Paul3

No: it's offended that he did what he did when asked not to do it. Also, knowing that it would be a big thing, even if he didn't know the ins and outs.

It's not asking him to agree: just asking him to have basic manners and consideration for those around him. How could you interpret anything else? I don't recall Calc asking for the kid to be tarred and feathered.

edited 15th Jun '12 10:54:10 AM by Euodiachloris